You can now easily share all of your exciting BillionGraves activity with your friends when you check-in to a cemetery or upload images.

Linking Images

You may have noticed there are quite a few headstones with more than one side. In the BillionGraves camera you will now find that there is a link button that allows you to connect multiple images of the same headstone.

Just take the first picture, press the “link” button and take the next picture, press the “link” button again for other sides if necessary.

Multi-lingual

BillionGraves for the iPhone and iPad now supports 3 different languages. English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Miscellaneous Fixes

Uploading issues, “Force Quit” problems, and a few other minor bugs have been fixed.

Download the update today in Apple’s AppStore or in the Android Market.

Today we released version 1.3 of the Android version of the app. Most of the updates are things you won’t notice—fine-tuning, bug fixes, etc. However, with this update we’ve made peace with several phone models that were formerly hostile to the BillionGraves software.

Android phones vary widely in terms of hardware and software functionality. Not all phones support the type of GPS that can tag your photos’ locations within a reasonable margin of error for cemeteries; some phones just use GPS differently than the majority of the Android models out there.

This update includes patches and workarounds for a number of phones that didn’t support BillionGraves before. If you haven’t been able to run BillionGraves on your Android phone previously, try out this update. If it works for you, let us know; if it doesn’t, still let us know by emailing support @ billiongraves.com. Our development team is always working to improve your use and experience with BillionGraves.

Also of note, we will not be holding a t-shirt contest this month. We will, however, have future contests and I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we have them ready for you. For now, keep your eyes on the Leaderboard and race to the top.

The recent Android update included numerous bug fixes and one new feature: linking images. This feature is in response to the need we’ve found (and you’ve undoubtedly seen) to link multiple images of the same headstone so anyone looking for the ancestor buried under that stone can get all the information available.

Using this feature is very simple:

Take a picture of one side of the headstone.

Tap the linking icon (the two chain links in the bottom left corner).

Take a picture of the other side of the headstone.

After you take the second picture, the linking will turn off. If you need to link more than two photos, just tap the linking button again after the second picture and so on until you’ve photographed the entire headstone. (You might also use it when you can get most of a headstone’s information in one shot, but because of tree roots or other immovable obstructions you need another photo to get all the information. Another opportunity for linking is when one large stone bears the family name associated with a large group of small stones surrounding it.)

Right now this feature is only available on Android, but the update to the iPhone is on its way. If you have linked photos together, right now that linking will not display on the website. The developers haven’t had a chance to implement a way to view and transcribe linked photos together. However, the website will be able to remember that the images are linked, so once we have that up and running the linking will display. We didn’t want to delay getting this feature out to you, even if it can’t display on the website, because keeping a single stone’s information together is so important.

Linking on the website will continue to evolve and improve, but for now, it’s fully functional on Android devices and you should make use of it when it’s needed.

On a completely unrelated note: You only have a few more hours to collect your 1,000th photo and earn your t-shirt. Hurry! Get out to the cemetery and map out those stones!

Today we released an update to the Android app that has some awesome fixes and will make it easier for more of you to use BillionGraves.

We’ve received reports from some of you that the app would force close when you tried to take a photo; that is probably the biggest issue that this update resolves.

There have also been some individuals whose new phones have not been able to get a GPS lock. This update will fix that problem for many users. (We know of one phone type that still cannot get an accurate lock and the developers are still hard at work getting it up and running. However, there are too many valuable fixes in this update for it to make sense to keep it from the rest of you based on that phone.)

In addition to these two big fixes, the developers have made several tweaks to improve the app’s ability to work on the variety of Android hardware and software.

If your phone has been having trouble running the app, download the update and take it for another trial run. Then pass your feedback along to support@billiongraves.com—as I’ve said before, the more information you can give us about your experiences, the better we can make BillionGraves.

Yesterday version 1.2 of the iPhone app was released, so the app is now free. I’ll talk more about the new features in the app in a bit; first I want to talk about some amazing people.

First, a big thank you to everyone who uploaded photos over the weekend. We’ve had our strongest four days ever, with thousands of photos uploaded every day.

Second, an equally big thank you to our expertly efficient transcribers, who seem to keep up just fine with the increase in uploads.

Third, a thank you and congratulations to our first t-shirt winners, DSWillett, Gableboy, and Mitchowl. All three of them have crossed the 1,000-photo threshold and have earned their BillionGraves t-shirt for the August promotion. (They’re also sitting quite comfortably at the top of the Leaderboard.) Awesome job, you three. I’m amazed at what you were able to do in only eight days.

Now that we’ve taken a moment to acknowledge everyone who keeps new information pouring in to BillionGraves, we have a chance to talk about the update for the iPhone app.

Version 1.2 has several enhancements, but there are a few you’ll notice more than the others:

Faster photo taking

Ability to add a cemetery using an address (in case you can’t get to the cemetery and add it using your current location)

The dashboard displays your transcription count along with your other counts

A link to the User Guide from the Settings view (in case you have any questions while you’re using the app)

The last, most drastic improvement to the app is the optional feature expansion available for a $2.99 in-app purchase (if you’re updating to version 1.2 from an earlier version you get the expansion automatically). This expansion bundle is called Records View. I’ve mentioned it before, but in case you missed the explanation, Records View unlocks three main options:

Search records that have already been transcribed from within the app (searching on the website is still, of course, free).

View a list of transcribed records whose GPS tags are near your current location.

View an already transcribed photo on the map along with your current location (this makes it easy to navigate to a headstone in an unfamiliar cemetery).

Records View allows you to access and utilize the information, photos, and records on the BillionGraves database in new and useful ways. I hope all of you who unlocked it automatically by updating enjoy the new feature bundle, and that those of you who are new to BillionGraves will consider adding this tool to your research toolbox.